Hackers appear to have posted account info for 4.6 million users of quickie social-sharing app Snapchat , making usernames and at least partial phone numbers available for download .

The data were posted to the website SnapchatDB.info . By late Wednesday morning , that site had been suspended .

The hack was seemingly intended to urge Snapchat to tighten its security measures . The anonymous hackers said they used an exploit created by recent changes to the app , which lets users share photos or short videos that disappear after a few seconds .

`` Our motivation behind the release was to raise the public awareness around the issue , and also put public pressure on Snapchat to get this exploit fixed . It is understandable that tech startups have limited resources but security and privacy should not be a secondary goal . Security matters as much as user experience does , '' the hackers said in a statement to technology blog TechCrunch .

In the statement , the hackers said they blurred the last two digits of the phone numbers they posted but were still considering whether to post more with the full number visible .

By Wednesday afternoon , developers had used the data to set up a website letting Snapchat users find out whether their accounts had been compromised .

Snapchat did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment .

Last week , Gibson Security -- a group of `` white hat '' hackers , meaning they do n't exploit the security gaps they find -- published what they said was code that would enable such a hack . The SnapchatDB group said Snapchat implemented `` very minor obstacles '' after that .

`` We know nothing about SnapchatDB , but it was a matter of time til something like that happened , '' Gibson Security wrote Wednesday on its Twitter account . `` Also the exploit works still with minor fixes . ''

In a blog post Friday , Snapchat appeared to minimize the potential damage from such a hack , claiming that it would require a `` huge set of phone numbers , like every number in an area code , '' to match usernames to numbers .

`` Over the past year we 've implemented various safeguards to make it more difficult to do . We recently added additional counter-measures and continue to make improvements to combat spam and abuse , '' the post read . `` Happy Snapping ! ''

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A hacker group says it accessed info for 4.6 million Snapchat users

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The group , SnapchatDB , urged the app to tighten security

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They said the last two digits in phone numbers were blurred

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Snapchat lets users share photos and videos